The U.K. government is facing a legal challenge from campaigners over its decision to override a local authority and wave through development of a new “hyperscale” data center.

Last year, the local authority of Buckinghamshire, England, denied planning permission for proposals to build a new 90-megawatt data center on green belt land. The green belt is a term in British town planning that refers to an area of open land on which building is restricted.

Data centers, large facilities that house floods of computing systems to enable remote delivery of various IT services, have seen huge demand in recent years amid a global rush to develop powerful new AI systems, such as OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT chatbot.

At the same time, they have been met with concerns from environmental campaigners and activists due to the vast amounts of power they require to keep them running on an ongoing basis. AI, in particular, has been criticized for consuming massive amounts of energy.

Plans to develop the Buckinghamshire facility were twice rejected by the council previously. However, they were again resurrected under the Labour government, which is pushing to make the U.K. a global artificial intelligence hub by ramping up national computing capacity.

Buckinghamshire council again rejected the planned data center in June 2024, saying it would be “inappropriate” to develop it on the green belt. Then, last month, British Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner granted planning permission for the project, overturning the local authority’s decision.

Campaign groups Foxglove and Global Action Plan announced on Thursday that they filed a formal planning statutory review asking a court to quash Rayner’s approval of the data center, raising concerns over the vast amounts of power and water such facilities require.

“Angela Rayner appears to either not know the difference between a power station that actually produces energy and a substation that just links you to the grid — or simply not care,” Foxglove Co-executive Director Rosa Curling, said in a statement Thursday. 

“Either way, thanks to her decision, local people and businesses in Buckinghamshire will soon be competing with a power guzzling-behemoth to keep the lights on, which as we’ve seen in the States, usually means sky-high prices.”

The U.K. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government — which Rayner also leads — declined to comment on the legal action when asked about it by CNBC. The government has previously stressed the importance of building data center infrastructure to compete on a global level in AI development.

Thursday’s move comes after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in January announced plans to block campaigners from making repeated legal challenges from so-called “Nimbys” to planning decisions for major infrastructure projects in England and Wales.

Nimby is a derogatory term that refers to people who protest developments they view as unpleasant or hazardous to their local area.

Meta Platforms has paused hiring for its new artificial intelligence division, ending a spending spree that saw it acquire a wave of expensive hires in AI researchers and engineers, the company confirmed Thursday. 

The pause was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, which said that the freeze went into effect last week and came amid a broader restructuring of the group, citing people familiar with the matter. 

In a statement shared with CNBC, a Meta spokesperson said that the pause was simply “some basic organizational planning: creating a solid structure for our new superintelligence efforts after bringing people on board and undertaking yearly budgeting and planning exercises.”

According to the WSJ report, a recent restructuring inside Meta has divided its AI efforts into four teams. That includes a team focused on building machine superintelligence, dubbed the “TBD lab,” or “To Be Determined,” an AI products division, an infrastructure division, and a division that focuses on longer-term projects and exploration.

It added that all four groups belong to “Meta Superintelligence Labs,” a name that reflects Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s desire to build AI that can outperform the smartest humans on cognitive tasks.

In pursuit of that goal, Meta has been aggressively spending on AI this year. That included efforts to poach top talent from other AI companies, with offers said to include signing bonuses as high as $100 million.  

In one of its most aggressive moves, Meta acquired Alexandr Wang, founder of Scale AI, as part of a deal that saw the Facebook parent dish out $14.3 billion for a 49% stake in the AI startup. 

Wang now leads the company’s AI lab focused on advancing its Llama series of open-source large language models.

Microsoft said last week that it plans to stop providing discounts on enterprise purchases of its Microsoft 365 productivity software subscriptions and other cloud applications.

Since the announcement, analysts have published estimates on how much more customers will end up paying. But for investors trying to figure out what it all means to Microsoft’s financials, analysts at UBS said the change is already factored into guidance.

“In our view, it is safe to assume that the impact of the pricing change” was included in Microsoft’s forecast, the analysts wrote in a report late Tuesday. They have a buy rating on the stock.

Microsoft’s disclosure, on Aug. 12, came two weeks after the software company, it its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report, issued a forecast that included double-digit year-over-year revenue growth for the new fiscal year. The shares rose 4% after the report.

Microsoft said in its blog post announcing the pricing change that, “This update builds on the consistent pricing model already in place for services like Azure and reflects our ongoing commitment to greater transparency and alignment across all purchasing channels.”

The change applies to companies with enough employees to get them into price levels known as A, B, C and D. It goes into effect when organizations sign up for new services or renew existing agreements, beginning on Nov. 1.

“This action allows us to deliver more consistent and transparent pricing and better enable clear, informed decision making for customers and partners,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC in an email.

Jay Cuthrell, product chief at Microsoft partner NexusTek, said customers will see price hikes of 6% to 12%. Partners are estimating an impact as low as as 3% and as high as 14%, UBS analysts wrote.

Microsoft 365 commercial seat growth, a measurement of the number of licenses that clients buy for their workers, has been under 10% since 2023. Microsoft is aiming to generate more revenue per seat by selling Copilot add-ons and moving some users to more expensive plans.

Expanding that part of the business is crucial. Most of Microsoft’s $128.5 billion in fiscal 2025 operating profit came from the Productivity and Business Processes unit, and about 73% of the revenue in that segment was from Microsoft 365 commercial products and cloud services.

Some customers could agree to pay Microsoft more to keep using the applications rather than moving to alternative services, said Adam Mansfield, practice lead at advisory firm UpperEdge. They may also lower their commitments to Microsoft in other areas, such as Azure cloud infrastructure, Mansfield said.

One way companies could potentially pay lower prices with the disappearance of discounts is by buying through cloud resellers instead of going direct, said Nathan Taylor, a senior vice president at Sourcepass, an IT service provider that caters to small businesses.

Sourcepass hasn’t gotten many leads as a result of Microsoft’s change yet, Taylor said.

“It takes a while for that information to disseminate to the industry at large,” he said.

Microsoft shares are up 20% this year, while the Nasdaq has gained about 10%.

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